The first female editor of The Sun, Rebekah Brooks - who has been found not
guilty in the phone hacking trial - balanced close friendships with Tony
Blair, Gordon Brown and then David Cameron

In the competitive world of tabloid newspapers Rebekah Brooks redefined what it meant to be ambitious.

Starting out as a secretary on the News of the World magazine in 1989, she rose through the News International ranks with frightening speed and was editing the entire newspaper within a decade.

Three years later she made history when she was appointed the first female editor of The Sun and by 40 was widely regarded as one the most powerful and influential women in Britain.

Her skills as a networker meant she was able to cleverly balance a close personal friendship with Tony Blair and his New Labour rival Gordon Brown and then seamlessly bond with David Cameron when he took over as Tory leader.

At her pinnacle she was able to make or break the careers of politicians and regularly wielded that power if they displeased her or more importantly her boss, Rupert Murdoch.

But if her journey to the top was meteoric, her fall from grace was even more spectacular.

The phone hacking scandal saw her replace cosy chats in Downing Street for the stark surroundings of the dock in Court 12 of the Old Bailey.

And while she is unlikely to ever grace a newsroom again, the legacy of her impact on Fleet Street and wider British public life will be felt for many years to come.

An only child, Rebekah Wade was born in Warrington, Cheshire in 1968 into a solidly middle class family.

Close to her grandmother who was keen writer and poet, the young Rebekah decided on a career in journalism while still a schoolgirl.

In her spare time she helped out in the offices of Eddie Shah’s short lived Warrington based national, The Post, where staff remembered her as a quiet but fiercely determined red head.

After a brief spell in Paris she moved to London and managed to get her foot in the Fleet Street door by landing a job as a secretary on the News of the World magazine.

Grasping every opportunity when it came along she refused to allow her lack of journalistic credentials stand in her way.

What she lacked in qualifications and experience, she more than made up for in drive, determination and hard work.

But what set her apart in the ultra-competitive corridors of News International was her unrivalled ability to turn on the charm for the people who mattered.

Groomed by the equally precocious editor Piers Morgan, she was quickly promoted, but it was the growing warmth with which Mr Murdoch and his deputy Les Hinton viewed her that granted her a place at the top table.

According to colleagues one of her main strengths was the ease with which she could win someone’s trust, making them feel they were the most important person in the world.

When in 1997 she informed the Tory MP Jerry Hayes that the paper was about to expose his affair with a gay lover, he was so impressed with the sympathetic way she delivered the news that he later rang the News of the World to thank them for her sensitivity.

One former colleague described her as a “galaxy-class schmoozer”, explaining that “world-class doesn’t quite do it justice”.

But her talents were certainly not appreciated by all at the Sunday tabloid and during the trial she recalled how her efforts to land one scoop were scuppered when she arrived in the office one day to discover some of her older colleagues had cut her phone line to prevent calls coming in.

On another occasion, while attending a golf tournament, she was asked to sew a button on a shirt belonging to a senior male executive.

Where other women in the same position may have balked at such blatant sexism, Mrs Brooks took it all in her stride, displaying a crucial ability to pick the correct battles to fight.

By 1998 she was deputy editor of The Sun and two years later Mr Murdoch demonstrated his faith in her by giving her the top job at the News of the World.

While executives at the newspaper group were familiar with her charm offensive, her staff were more used to witnessing her ruthless side.

One former News of the World staffer said: “Rebekah lived to please Rupert. She was ultra-competitive and hated to get beaten by the other papers. She was extremely demanding and woe betide anyone who crossed her. But the truth is she was massively over promoted and didn’t really have a clue how to edit a paper.

“She was astute enough to realise the importance of a strong team though and assembled a formidable array of talent around her at both the News of the World and The Sun. She shone because of those around her.”

But while her career continued to go from strength to strength, her personal life was, by her own admission, something of “car crash”.

In the mid-1990s she began dating the high profile EastEnders’ actor Ross Kemp. They married 1998 and despite their hectic schedules decided to try for a family.

Fertility problems and difficulties with the marriage coincided with the start of an eight-year on off affair with her deputy at the News of the World, Andy Coulson.

Perhaps unsurprisingly her marriage to Kemp failed and in 2005, Brooks became headline news herself when she was arrested after allegedly assaulting her husband during a violent row.

The couple split and Brooks threw herself back into work, but then in 2007 was introduced to the racehorse trainer, Charlie Brooks, by their mutual friend and Sun columnist Jeremy Clarkson.

She said : “When Charlie and I met I think it’s fair to say we knew very quickly that we wanted to be together.”

She said she was honest about the fact she might not be able to have children but soon after their marriage they began to explore the possibility of surrogacy.

In 2012 their daughter, Scarlet was born, after a relative agreed to carry the baby.

Mrs Brooks explained: “My mum was out shopping in Warrington one day and she bumped into my cousin, who I was very close to at school.

“My cousin asked how we were getting on, how the latest treatment was going. She said I will do it and she did.”

With a promotion to Chief Executive Officer of the whole of News International, it may have appeared for a while that everything was rosy in the garden.

But the clouds of the phone hacking scandal were beginning to gather and in July 2011 the storm finally descended with revelations that Milly Dowler’s phone had been hacked by the News of the World under her stewardship.

For ten days Brooks grimly hung on to her job winning the backing of Mr Murdoch who at the height of the furore told the television cameras her welfare was his top priority.

Many staff at the News of the World voiced their disgust that she had not resigned earlier, allowing the scandal to reach such a crescendo that Mr Murdoch felt he had no choice but to close the 168-year-old paper.

Two days after her resignation she was arrested by appointment at a police station in Lewisham and after a lengthy investigation was charged with conspiracy to hack phones, conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

Even during the ignominy of her criminal trial, Rebekah Brooks never lost sight of the importance to schmooze.

Arriving at court each day in a range of designer outfits Mrs Brooks chatted airily with journalists covering the case, eager to get a sense of how the media thought things were going.

Several weeks into the trial she expressed surprise at the number of reporters still turning up each day, joking: “I thought there would only be the Warrington Guardian left by now.”